


An Evening in the Mojave

by JeanZedlav



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 15:19:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16997496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanZedlav/pseuds/JeanZedlav
Summary: Vulpes and Gabriella (Female Courier) spend an evening in the Mojave.





	An Evening in the Mojave

**Author's Note:**

> Defected Vulpes, post Legion defeat, House ending. Tumblr request, overly detailed writing, first attempt at explicit. Violence mentioned: Nipton, flaying, crucifixion.

The simmering heat of the Mojave sun was fading as the Courier paused at the top of the rise to survey the land beneath them. Dry and brown, scattered with shrub, stretching out to the horizon where the rolling hills met the sunset. Beneath the ridge lay a scatting of houses, nothing more than the long-forgotten remnants of an insignificant Old World ranch.

Several of the buildings were already collapsed into rubble, while another leaned at an alarming angle. The fences that had once surrounded the buildings were long since destroyed by wind and rot and animals. Yet more than a few looked habitable, and what little shelter their pockmarked roofs would provide was better than nothing against the cold of the Mojave night.

Beside him, the Courier exhaled a long stream of smoke as she surveyed the buildings. Her right hand absently tucked her lighter away; her left slipped her energy pistol from its holster, turning it over to check its charge. In the light of the setting sun the brown curls spilling over her shoulder were tinted auburn.

Vulpes was careful to remain upwind of the acrid smell of cigarette smoke as he approached her, .44 Magnum in hand. He preferred the ripper he carried, but would rather not be attacked from the shelter of the buildings while armed only with it. “Ruins of the Old World, rotting into the Mojave. In this state, it’s unlikely that they have been inhabited since the bombs fell.”

“The smaller house is intact enough to spend the night against.” She adjusted the energy weapon on her back as she leapt down the short embankment at the top of the ridge. The ground beneath was steep, but once she stopped sliding she looked back up at him, smiling, eyes bright. “I’ll head around the right. You go left.”

They found no people in any of the buildings, only long forgotten, rusted skeletons of trucks in the barn and a half-dozen brittle, broken jet canisters beside what remained of a dead man and his sand filled 9mm in the main house. Once they had cleared the last shed, half collapsed and sitting by itself on the far edge of the fenceline, the Courier put away her pistol and used the ball of her boot to sharply nudge one of the fallen boards away from the place it had fallen in the sand. It was longer than it had appeared and as it moved a small lizard fled from underneath, scurrying further under the pile of rubble.

“There aren’t any footprints anywhere, even in the dirt inside the houses. It’s like no one has been here in years.” She stilled, almost ceasing to breathe as she examined the dull landscape in detail. When she looked back at him, head tilted up and grinning. “If I get attacked by deathclaws in my sleep I’m blaming you.”

“The Legion removes nearby dangerous creatures when they take over an area. I doubt we will have cause to worry about deathclaws or cazadores. It is more likely that those who might have lived here moved to the nearest settlements instead and assisted the community with agriculture or labor.”

She raised a brow, but rather than disagreeing settled for picking up the board she had dislodged and started for the smaller, more stable house to the south. Vulpes did not know if she actually agreed that citizens being forced to organize in order to better the whole population was a positive, or if she was concerned enough about the prospect of deathclaws to not want to hold another argument about the Legion being a “violently misogynistic, unnecessarily sadistic, hilariously under-equipped, personality cult.” With the Legion having fallen into Aurelius’ hands, he did not know if he completely disagreed at the moment.

While the Courier coaxed a fire to life with her unreliable lighter and a handful of dry grass, Vulpes rifled through their packs for food. His companion had far more useless, Old World junk food than he did, including a package of gum drops which he promptly took for himself, but she also had several banana yucca fruits tossed in randomly alongside drugs and spare parts. He combined those with gecko meat from his bag, and Jalapeño peppers inside the small bag she carried that was meant for actual food.

By the time he dug through the disorganized knapsack she kept her life in, the fire was dancing merrily as she fed it shreds of wood, pieces of her armor discarded next to her bag. Vulpes set the metal cooking pan over the open flame while he opened the fruit and cut it into pieces with a spare knife. The Courier stole the Jalapeños, discarding their stems and insides before cutting them into strips and adding them to the pieces of meat in the pan. She then produced the tin utensils from the chaos which was her bag.

“Did you want to sleep inside?” While he focused on not burning the food over the open flame, she plucked one of the forgotten banana yucca fruit pieces from the ground and nibbled at the bits of remaining edible fruit. As if on cue something fell in the distance, echoing as it was joined by a cascade of collapsing wood. The Courier froze at the sound, turning slowly to look at Vulpes.

“It may not be the best idea.” He withdrew the cooking pan from the fire and poured the food onto the plates, setting the pan aside to allow it time to cool. Smiling broadly, she stabbed a piece of fruit with her fork and ate it gingerly, wincing at the heat. “

“We can die from deadly wildlife or collapsing houses!” She said brightly. “Our choices get better all the time!”

“As welcoming as the rotting shells of forgotten houses are, I will risk the wildlife. I suspect the most dangerous things we will find here are coyotes and horses.” While the night air was cooling quickly, the house blocked most of the wind. He doubted the houses with large holes in them would do any better. “And it will be warmer outside with the fire.”

“Well,” her hair was tied high on her head, and as she tapped the back of her fork on the wall behind her it tangled in the loose strands, “we could set the house on fire-”

“No-”

“-and then that would produce warmth.”

“I fail to understand your obsession with fire.” He did not understand a great many things about the Courier. The woman was deadly in a way few were. She had faced the Legate in battle and cut off his head with his own sword, scattered the Legion before her, and then abandoned New Vegas to House’s rule. She was also utterly mad, high on a rush of fear and death and victory, every action sharp and unsubtle and neigh senseless until you managed to untangle the complicated, often crazy web of ideas that had gotten her there.

“My obsession with fire?” Her teeth glinted white in the fire, dark eyes bright. “I’m sure the former mayor of Nipton would disagree that I’m the one with the obsession with fire.”

Vulpes smirked back at her, raising a brow at her confidence. His reaction to her in Niption itself has been much the same. She had been far more interested in tracking down the Chairman who had shot her in the head than worrying about dead townspeople, no matter how gruesome their deaths. Had he known then what he did now he would have offered to help her find him in exchange for her telling everyone she encountered what had occurred at Nipton. “You killed everyone in Nelson, set the entire outpost on fire, and crucified Dead Sea upside down before flaying him alive and leaving him to die in the fire.”

She sighed heavily. “I’ve explained this, if you turn them upside down the blood flows to their head and they die slowly.”

“When one dies because of a fire when their skin is gone, it is a very slow death indeed.”

“Please, he died of smoke inhalation, not fire. If the NCR had been a bit faster in their arrival then they’d have known that.”

“The NCR didn’t go into Nelson for three days after you left.” By all accounts, they didn’t want to fight the Courier who had done overnight what had taken them months. Vulpes would have scoffed at their cowardice, but all of his information came from spies within their ranks and so was rather limited.

“They need better spotters. I left before the fires burned out.”

“After flaying a man.”

Her grin spread. “Vulpes, I don’t think you get to give others moral advice.”

“Nipton was-”

“Town of whores, got that part. I’m just saying that if Nelson hadn’t been staffed by assholes they’d still be alive.”

“You flayed a man alive and you’re making moral judgements about him?”

“That’s what happens when you let your men try to enslave and rape people.”

“You bore the Mark of Caesar. You could have explained-”

“And they could have not been dicks and tried to enslave innocent passersby.” The Courier set her plate aside as she yawned. “I passed by the NCR earlier that day and I only had to threaten to murder them to make them leave me alone. If it had been that simple Nelson would still be standing.”

"I'm sure you would eventually have found a reason to burn it down." Vulpes turned to feed the fire while she leaned past him to catch straps of her bag and remove her bedroll from the bottom of it. In one movement, she jerked the straps of her bedroll open and shoved it roughly. It rolled, too close to the house, catching on the ancient wall until she haphazardly tugged it straight.

"Yes, I'm clearly the worst person here." The Courier settled atop her blankets, one leg curled underneath her, reaching up to loosen her hair from its tie and letting it fall across her shoulders. When she stretched, it caused the white shirt she had worn under her armor to pull tight against the flesh of her abdomen.

Vulpes abandoned the fire. He wrapped his hand around her ankle while she was distracted and tugged sharply, setting her off balance. She landed on her back, laughing, dark hair flung across the tanned canvass underneath her. Before she could catch herself he was on top of her, one hand tangled in her hair, nipping at the side of her neck, admiring the open-mouthed moan his actions elicited. “Fuuuuck, yes.”

Nipping at her collarbone, he hummed against her heated skin as he worked her shirt from her pants and pushed it over her breasts. Her hands skimmed over his chest, finding the clasps of his leather armor and fumbling over them for a moment before twisting them open in stumbling, desperate movements, peeling away the belts that held his clothing in place. It was easy to lose himself in her. During his days in the Legion, most of the partners he had chosen had been other legionaries, men who would react rather than recoil. In that, the Courier did not disappoint. She was a wild thing this one, like the skies and sands of the Mojave, and all of House’s mad grasping had only grazed at her in passing.

Writhing under his attention, she mewled as he licked at one of her breasts, small and pert, one of her hands reaching up to keep his head in place, locking into his short hair. He used the moment to rid her of her belt and pants, opening the familiar buckles with ease and dragging them away as she lifted her hips, thrusting them against his to aid him. Once she is naked under him he paused to take her in, all soft curves and flat planes, sharp-edged and deadly, and Vulpes leaned down to kiss her more gently than he means to. She nipped at his bottom lip, points of her breasts pressing against his chest, one arm locked around his neck.

He took the moment to rid himself of his clothes, hanging from his body due to her efforts, and she is upon him already. Her hands slid down his chest, lingered at a particularly vicious scar, traced along the upward edge. Taking advantage of her preoccupation, he wrapped his hands under her knees and pulled her up. She laughed at his boldness as she fell back, his rough hands on her soft skin, it turned into a gasp, air wrenched from her lungs as he sucked her clit into his mouth without warning.

She cursed, violently, in Latin, and tried to twist away on instinct. There is no real effort behind it, and he gentled his movements, easing her into it, licking her in soothing motions as she settled under him. Her snarls turned into moans, resistance into eager whimpers and loose muscles. Keeping one hand on her leg, he settled a finger at her entrance, probing. She was wet, rocking back against him instantly, and he slid two fingers into her with no resistance. Her skin was alight in the campfire, arms behind her head, his name breaking into syllables on her tongue.

He returned his focus to flicking his tongue over her clit, just the way she liked, and enjoying the twitching in her limbs. The higher she arched into him the more pressure he added, a third finger pressed into her, and as her body tightened further he turned the licking into sharp sucking. She swore to the gods, he thought he heard Venus’ name among them as she peaked, and he slowly withdrew as she came down, trading his tongue for fingers on her clit. Her sex was red and puffy, slick with saliva and her pleasure. Her clit was swollen, over sensitive even to his gentle touch.

Through the haze of pleasure, she reached for him, clumsily, trying to untangle her legs from his shoulders. He ignored her grasping hands, moved back just far enough to adjust her legs from his shoulders to his hips and line himself up. She was cursing at him again as he sank into her slowly, taking a moment to close his eyes, press his head against her shoulder, and enjoy the warmth enclosing him.

“Fuck.” She breathed into his shoulder, and he felt the word more than heard it. “Move, damn you.”

He laughed at the whine in her voice, sliding his hand between their bodies to find her clit again, to tease her, to drive her head back and expose the lines of her neck. “You beg so sweetly. Say please.”

“Fuck you.”

He sucked her nipple into his mouth, nipping lightly, and found her clit with swift, determined circles. One of her hands gripped his shoulder so tightly that he’d have crescent-shaped scars there for days, the other he pinned to the ground beneath them before it can do more damage. Her legs wrapped around his waist, plunging upward, urging him on. Vulpes has learned to read his Courier, parse every breath and flicker of expression in expert understanding, and so he slid out of her, drew a whine with him.

The forward snap of his hips, sinking to the hilt in one movement, made her scream. When she rocked her hips to meet his next thrust she’s left with nothing. “Bastard.”

“Say it and you get what you want,” he licked a trail up her neck until she’s moaning, hips twitching toward him uselessly, his touch feather-light between her thighs.

He brought her to the edge again and again, her head falling back against her blankets, her breath coming in shallow pants, her heart threatening to escape her chest. By the time she gave in her eyes were wild and she was clinging to him in desperation. “Fuck, please, Vulpes, please fuck me, fill me up, I want to feel your cock inside me-”

“That wasn’t difficult, was it?” Vulpes leaned down to kiss her. Looking back, he wasn’t entirely sure if he had been too slow in his actions or overly condescending for her tastes, but it was certainly one of them. She unhooked her ankles behind him, lifted her knee over his shoulder, and flipped them over.

“Gabriella!” Startled, his hands snapped to her hips on reflex, as if to steady her. It was a useless attempt, because she was already guiding him to her entrance.

“Domineering bastard,” she gasped, too focused on her own pleasure to be truly angry. Her hips met his in one movement, sinking down until she was filled, riding him in sharp, quick movements. Vulpes had seduced women from Flagstaff to Freeside, so he took her hips in his hands and guided her to meet his thrusts just so, setting a rhythm until she was crying out in pleasure each time he sank to the hilt, her breasts bouncing, head thrown back, skin gleaming in the flickering light of the fire.

He met each of her thrusts, canting his hips into hers to match her rhythm, and could already feel her tightening around him. He nudged aside the fingers that she had on her clit, allowing her to better brace herself, and took a moment to enjoy the sight of her coming apart on top of him. “You’re beautiful like this. Fucking yourself on my cock like you were made for me.”

“So fucking close,” she gasped. A few thrusts later she came, tightening around him, fingers curling into his chest, nails scratching his skin, heat surging around his cock. Vulpes, who had not been all that close moments earlier, was driven to the edge by her orgasm. He shifted his grip on her hips, fucking up into her in smooth, fast motions, focus forgotten. He came buried in her to the hilt, gasping as he emptied into her.

A few final thrusts and the afterglow started setting in. Sound began to filter back in the crackling of the fire, Gabriella’s breathing from where she was collapsed on his chest, eyes half closed. Her body was flushed, lips swollen, sweat lighting her skin in the firelight. Vulpes traced a hand up the side of her head, gently brushing his fingers over the prickly, shaved side of her head before sinking into the thick, curly hair which hid her face. When he brushed it back she groaned weakly, shifting slightly to slid off of his chest and into the blankets beside him.

They lay there together, a tangled mess of limbs in her bedroll, his arm under her, her face pressed into his chest, enjoying the afterglow as the light of the fire died. The buckle of her bedroll pressed into his back, his gun was just out of reach, and the fire was slowly burning down. Behind him, their camp was a mess. He itched to organize the area and re-pack everything into its place, put out the fire and insure his weapons were within reach, a desire born of years in the Legion. He could burn the Legion sigil and abandon their cause, but he could not rid himself of the military precision that had been bled into him, even had he wanted to. Even so, he knew better than to interrupt what he had now, the Mojave’s Courier’s curled up in his arms, content and dozing.


End file.
